Hello happy people! I hope that your day is rocking the block! I recently wrote a piece for you about 5 cards I'd unban from the Commander list if I could! You can read it here. I liked it a lot! The Commander Committee has regularly said that when they go to ban a card, they look for cards to unban to keep the numbers roughly the same. You don't want a format to have too many banned cards. You can find the EDH Banned list here.

In that spirit, today I want to follow up that list with some cards that I feel could be given the banhammer safely. My #2 card for this list was recently hammered (Hullbreacher) but what else is out there that is bannable? Let's look!

I am not advocating for banning a card that is heavily played. We shouldn't be banning Swords to Plowshares, Cultivate, or Command Tower. They are all heavily played but don't create unfair game states that are very difficult or impossible to overcome. Consider the card Demonic Tutor which I see on these lists a lot. It's heavily played, but it's just a 1:1 card that doesn't take an overly long time to Tutor for just one card from your deck. We have tons of other cards, so if you banned Demonic Tutor, you'd still have everything from Diabolic Tutor to Vampiric Tutor to many others still getting played.

Just like the previous article, I'm very comfortable banning the top four, and could be in the conversation for the next two but am more on the fence about those.

These cards include those that I keep checking the list because they are so abusive that they cannot be legal.

Honorable Mention. Expropriate

Hi! I am going to take at least one more turn, and I am going to steal your stuff and smash you with it while I do so. Does anyone think that this is a fair card? Nope? Exactly. This is a nasty card. We'll do a deeper dive into why people hate running into it so much for my #3 card below, but it's not well received at the kitchen table when playing a multiplayer game. Not even a little bit.

#5. Gaea's Cradle

Lands are the hardest thing to answer in Commander. You have a few choices. Strip Mine and Wasteland effects will work in any color. Another option is the generic Vindicate that will destroy any permanent even lands. And then the last is to run actual, proper, LD effects in colors like Black (Sinkhole), Green (Ice Storm) and Red (Stone Rain).

But those are very limited in scope and are thus rarely played in Commander. And that's a real issue for the Cradle since it breaks the game in half once it can reliably tap for 4 or 7 Green mana at a time. Sure, its legendary status means that, in other formats, you cannot run more than one at a time. But that's not a limitation in a singleton format like Commander. Note that there are answers to the Cradle which are unrelated to the land itself - you can destroy the creatures it relies upon. A sweeping removal spell like Damnation or Wrath of God will mute a Cradle, but only for a short while. A land that taps for two generic mana only - Ancient Tomb, is run heavily in this format. After a Wrath of God, they can still easily tap it for 2-3 Green very ably. This is the most abusive land that's legal in the format. Especially in the era of Heroic Intervention effects that won't even stop this land from tapping for an abusive amount of mana.

Alright, now let's move away from cards I'm on the fence and lean towards ban to really banning.

#4. Survival of the Fittest

This card isn't even legal in Legacy! And that format allows all sorts of nonsense! This is half of a powerful combo with Recurring Nightmare that really broke the format in half. You could discard any creature card to tutor over and over again with Survival of the Fittest from your deck. The discarded cards pile up in your graveyard. Cast a one (or zero drop). Drop the Nightmare and then sacrifice the cheap creature for the best one you just tutored, and the Nightmare bounces back to your hand safely tucked away from removal.

Bounce is a part of the cost, so you cannot respond to its activation with instant speed removal. As long as the controller of the Nightmare doesn't pass priority, your only answer is a counter.

This was a very unfair combo during its day and the Nightmare is banned in Commander. And it should be! But why isn't its arguably better half still allowed? Survival of the Fittest is nasty in modern Commander fueling your hand and graveyard massively, and it also is taking time as each activation is a tutor of your library for that specific answer or problem. Shoot, it takes more time than cards that are banned like Falling Star takes after folks rearrange their battlefield, and yet it's still legal. No idea why. It should be banned from a time perspective as well as a power one.

#3. Stasis

Hello fans of powerful, hard to answer, tempo playing, game lengthening tool of nastiness. Not only is Stasis an unfair card with Commanders that untap things like a certain planeswalker version of Teferi that's playable as a Commander, (Teferi, Temporal Archmage), but it forces the game to run long without any obvious ways to end Stasis. You can combine it with tapping of lands on arrival effects easily, from Kismet to Root Maze as well. And then you have a slooooow Stasis-laden game that won't play out easily or quickly where Stasis is the dominant card. Just run something like Artful Dodge and Blightsteel Colossus that ends the game on that turn.

Did you know that EDHREC.com has a factor voted on by fans of the format called the "Salt Score?" You can find it here. Its highest salt score of 3.15 is a lot more than #2 card Winter Orb at 2.93 which is just a short bit above the #3 card we already had on our list, Expropriate. (And there is another big drop from #3 to #4, so those next two cards live on a plateau of unlove).

Stasis should be banned, and then you just have to ask permission to allow it, it's that unfairly played and that dominant of a card.

#2. Ad Nauseam

Our new #2 is this Black instant. This nasty instant really wants to draw a lot of cards and requires a very specific build. If you've ever had an Ad Nauseam resolved against you then you know that this player won't even give you the courtesy of a fast-ending game. And you are forced to resolve it since there is a chance, albeit a small one of them missing their combo card or running out of gas.

What this deck does is grab a ton of free drops like Lotus Petal that are mana positive and then one drops like Dark Ritual and others and casts them all on the same turn, and then casts a storm card like Tendrils of Agony for the win. That's how the deck works. It reminds me of cards that create a powerful game state but which you feel compelled to allow to run their course since they aren't 100%.

There used to be a combo deck called Eggs that was legal, but it was the same thing, a slow combo deck that took 25 minutes to resolve and which you had to let resolve since there was a small chance that it would misfire. The key combo card for Eggs, Second Sunrise, was banned, and things ended. This is the same issue, and like Second Sunrise, Ad Nauseam should be banned.

#1. Mana Crypt

This is our top scoring card on today's countdown. As you can see, Mana Crypt makes my top spot. Sol Ring is a dominant force in this format and can unfairly push someone a few turns ahead, but that at least costs mana. This is free! In a mono-Black deck, Mana Crypt is better than Mox Jet, which is banned. In many ways, two mana for free is better than one mana for free. I have no idea why a free two mana accelerant is still legal in this format, especially as it speeds up. Ban this and slow things down!

And there we go! I hope that you enjoyed my Top Five this week! Anything you think should be banned that I missed? Just let me know!